Passages written by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, hidden for nearly 800 years, returned to view over the past 2 weeks, thanks to researchers at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) in Menlo Park, California. The scientists used the synchrotron's hair-thin beam of x-rays to light up the Archimedes text, which was originally copied by a 110th century scribe onto goatskin parchment. Three centuries later, a monk scraped off the Archimedes text, turned the pages sideways, and copied Greek Orthodox prayers onto the recycled pages. Although Stanford's analysis of the text hasn't yet revealed any obvious revolutionary surprises, researchers did find a new geometric drawing as well as several previously missing passages.
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